Various types of devices such as additive printers, computer numerical control (CNC) mills, laser cutters, photopolymerizers, and others are currently used for 3D manufacturing. Manufacturing systems for these 3D manufacturing devices are typically vertical solutions, meaning content-producing software is generally required to understand and produce the exact printer language that a particular target 3D manufacturing device implements. In other words, content-producing software is often coded to be specific to a particular 3D manufacturing device.
As only the inventors have observed, this tight dependency constrains content-software vendors from producing 3D models that are rich and device-neutral. As only the inventors have observed, this close coupling between 3D manufacturing devices and the software for producing and preparing content also constrains producers of 3D manufacturing devices from innovating. A device maker may not be able to make modify its hardware with improvements due to the need to maintain interoperability with existing content-producing software.
Currently, there is not a systemic mechanism to ensure that users can obtain consistent results when preforming 3D manufacturing, regardless of which content-producing software or 3D manufacturing device is used.